Take a number: 1 million acre-feet

The Westlands Water District and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California are allies, though uneasy ones. MWD splits from Westlands on H.R. 23, the bill by Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, that Westlands helped draft. The legislation would preempt state water law and open the way for a million more acre-feet of water to be exported to points south annually. Jeff Kightlinger, MWD’s executive director, told The Take that the bill “is not helpful” to the effort to gain approval of the $15.5 billion twin tunnel project to move water across the Delta. He plans to recommend that the MWD board oppose it. “It goes too far on issues like Endangered Species Act,” Kightlinger said. “We want to work within the existing framework.” MWD seems likely to embrace the tunnel project, but needs Westlands to sign on to help pay. Perhaps H.R. 23 is Westlands’ way of saying the tunnels project pencils out, only if it can grab more water.

Dana Milbank: Health care legislation languishes without presidential leadership. The Russia sanctions bill, a veto-proof rebuke to the president, seizes a foreign policy function from an unreliable commander in chief. Trump, baffling and alarming allies, goes on the attack against his attorney general, Jeff Sessions. It’s the United States of Anarchy.

Mailbag

“Now that the cyclists have taken over the sidewalks, where does the city suggest we walkers walk?” – Julia Leissl, Sacramento

And finally,

The California Nurses Association is not letting go of Speaker Anthony Rendon, who incurred the nurses’ wrath by acting responsibly and killing the Senate’s half-backed single payer bill, SB 562. “Why is Rendon holding healthcare hostage?” a nurses union mailer asks. It proceeds to answer the question by pointing out that he has taken campaign donations from opponents of SB 562. That math would be easy. The bill was so ill-conceived that anyone giving it any thought would oppose it.